Winter Larva

[DUBBN]

Thank you Dana. I appreciate the kind words.

[DUBBN]

In the words of Led Zeppelin, "Ramble on". Winter fly fishing up here is usually out of the question. I have a window that slams shut right about ...two days ago. It was -7 below this morning, and the river was nothing but slush ice from bank to bank. I have a really good relationship with a couple of the fisheries biologists down in Ashland, and they told me that the whole larvae thing on the Fish River is a wastes of time. There simply aren't any.

I hate dams with a passion that burns with the heat of a thousand suns, but... I'd like to be able to fish a tailwater just once in my life.

Great job, Wayne! Keep posting!

Mike, I just noticed you referred to a dam. This is a Freestone that I am using these on.

[Roadkill]

DUBBN,
Love them all!

Simple and effective and hard to go wrong with any stage of their life cycle. Stomach pumps or kick net can be helpful, if you don't clean any fish to eat! There are over 2,000 species to find and mimic in our waters, get to know your local bugs and have fun.

My first serious book on them was Midge Magic by Holbrook & Koch and the last I added was Modern Midges by Takahashi & Hubka with over 1,000 flies in the book!

[letumgo]

Wayne/Bill/Dana - The mention of stomach pump reminded me of one of the Christmas gifts I asked for this year. It is a narrow spoon (lab spatula) that I thought would be perfect for sampling a trout's stomach, without causing injury. I found these on Amazon and added them to my wish list. Luckily Santa saw my list.






The handle is approximately 6.5 inches (16.5 cm) long and the elongated spoon at the end is roughly 3/8" (0.6 cm) wide by 1.25 inches (2.7 cm) long. The edges were a bit rough, so I've polished them with very fine emery paper to smooth and round the edges. I will put one of these in my chest pack, for the spring fishing season.

What do you think? Crazy right?

(Thanks Santa!)

[Roadkill]

[ronr]

I keep coming back to this post.... another question for DUBBN... straight hook vs curved hook... i see you use both... what is the logic of one vs the other for your patterns?

[DUBBN]

I keep coming back to this post.... another question for DUBBN... straight hook vs curved hook... i see you use both... what is the logic of one vs the other for your patterns?

Hi Ron. There is no logic or thought. I have always tyed midge larva, and emergers on both straight and/or curved hooks. I do not think one has a real advantage over the other. I usually follow the preference of the patterns developer. If I develop the pattern, I usually go by the shape of the midge in the pump sample. We both know that just because a bug looks one way when dead does not necessarily mean that was the shape it had when alive. As mentiomed, I dont think there is a huge difference in hook shapes. I even like the 200R style of hook. That has been the catalyst to some very heated discussions with people that are scared to use that model. It is a very polarizing hook style.

Somewhere I have video of a couple midge emerging to adults in my hand. At no point were they ever curved during the process. Still, most emerger patterns are tyed on curved hooks. There are thousand upon thousands of midge species. Perhaps some emerge in the curved position.

If I knew how to add video to this forum I would search it out and show it to you. Weird to me is the midges were taken from a stomach sample using the pump.

[letumgo]

Wayne,

You can post a video by clicking the little icon that looks like a monitor on the far right (media button), then paste the link in the middle.

[DUBBN]

Wayne,

You can post a video by clicking the little icon that looks like a monitor on the far right (media button), then paste the link in the middle.

Thanks Ray. Now I will try to extract it from Instagram.

[DUBBN]

Ray let me know how your sample collector works. I am very interested.